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I like to think of myself as the independent type of reviewer. Besides the fact that I don't have the funding to review newer titles, I am going to review a popular game from last year that is worthy of my attention. That game is Fallout 3.
Fallout 3 was developed by Bethesda, the company responsible for the ever popular Elder Scrolls Oblivion. It is difficult to find anything to say about this game that hasn't already been said, but for what it's worth, the quests are varied and the apocalyptic wasteland of Washington D.C. is filled with characters that are easy to both like and hate, but yet no matter what their personality traits are like, they are almost all easy to sympathize with. Each and every character can be like a kind and gentle kitten, or a mauling, and brutal cougar, but each will act according to the circumstances of the tense situation that they are usually forced into. You can coerce some characters into joining you. However, all of these types of characters will only decide to join based on your karma level. Evil characters will also request a fee to participate in your whacky shenanigans. I mean, since their evil, they really don't have a reason to join you out of the kindness of their heart. Good characters will join you if help them in a quest that they most likely assist you on anyway to make sure that the job gets done.
The setting and even most of the enemies, i.e. the raiders seem to be inspired heavily by the Mad Max films, with many intense fire fights that can pointless to attempt to run away from, considering that the wasteland is so massive that another town or settlement of any kind could be miles away in any direction, instilling the sense of isolation while wandering the wastes that show no signs of life until it shoots at you in the face.
The perk system is intuitive, adding abilities that are very helpful to multiple character traits, abilities, and classes so that players who choose to have a good, neutral, or evil character and are a thief, barter, or any other class can have a fun and easy level of accessibility.
There are game play quirks however, like how you can change the difficulty whenever you please. This is a flawed feature because let's say you find a creature that is hard to kill, like a super mutant behemoth. You can pause the game, turn the difficulty all the way down to very easy, get its health down to one HP, turn the difficulty back up to very hard, kill it, then BAM! You suddenly just "earned" a crap load of experience points. Also, third person view is poor and clunky at best, it's highly recommended to stick to first person view.
The ending is one the worst game endings I've ever seen. Once it ends, it literally ends. You can't continue, so be sure to save somewhere before the end if you really want to finish all of the available quests in the game, as well as to not have to create a new character and start all over again.
Despite these things, Fallout 3 is certainly worthy of all of those game of the year awards it received.

Last edited by thevoice560; 04-20-2009 at 09:50 PM.
Reason: extension of review for informational purposes